Hello phillip
On 16/03/08, phillip holmes wrote:
I seek out UK "dynagroove" pressings since the English just mastered
them the same as the rest of their records (IE really well). I don't
think that RCA sent them the dynagroove processed tapes. I believe
the
tapes sent to the US RCA cutting guys were pre-distored. In other
words, the guys doing the cutting weren't integral to the dynagroove
process. That's my understanding. I've been told by more than once
source that the dynagroove process occurred at HQ where different EQ
and distortion was added to a subsequent master to be used for
cutting. The distortion and EQ would change the further into the side
you got.
I have quite a few RCA pop and jazz records that sound good. It's
funny that RCA decided to follow Columbia's lead in producing good
sounding jazz/pop and bad sounding classical. By the early '70s, most
good sounding classical was coming from England. It's a shame that
they changed anything from the early '60s. They may have had
access to
better microphones and tape decks, but the bad production values more
than eliminated any gains in the quality of equipment available to
the
engineers. Hell, I'd take tape hiss and saturation with a simple
microphone setup any day (as opposed to 1,000 microphones, a team of
guys in lab coats, and lots of monkey business).
Some of the worst sound in the 70s came from Deutsche Grammofon, who
went overboard on the multi-mic approach.
Regards